 |
Thursday,
May 3, 2001, Chandigarh, India   |
A slap on Pak wrist Justice to rape victims Space tourism |
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
From Bangla border to CBI chief
Bureaucrat of a special breed
In pursuit of
happiness
Changing role of UK’s
war-time bunker
Indian nursery rhymes
|
|
A slap on Pak wrist PAKISTAN
must be pleasantly surprised at the mild rebuke it got from the USA. It was expecting a thundering denunciation. Also, the USA has indicated that it does not propose to declare it as terrorism-sponsoring country. It says it takes an overall view of counter-terrorism and here Pakistan has earned two brownie points. It is assisting the USA in prosecuting those involved in bombing its embassies and has sent a Pakistan national to stand trial for killing two CIA employees near the agency’s headquarters. These constitute counter-terrorism measures which are good enough to wash off all those terrorism-related policies. The Patterns of Terrorism-2000 report admits that Pakistan is still helping the Taliban in a big way, providing army instructors and even fighters to capture the northern district of Mazar-e-Sharif. Fuel also flows into it, without which the landlocked country cannot exist. However, the USA believes that there is no arms trade, banned by a UN resolution. Then there is the open encouragement to terrorist groups to fight in Kashmir. Harkat-ul-Mujahideen, Lashkar-e-Toiba and the newly floated Jaish-e-Mohammed received ample attention as does their fund-raising and arms-procuring success. There is a bit of tut-tutting but no condemnation or call for restraint. The USA thinks that monotonously listing the groups and slightly increasing the decibel of protest will do; and Pakistan’s stray gestures to promote the US fight against terrorism should weigh more than its support to all those murderous gangs. There may be some logic in not declaring Pakistan a terrorism-sponsoring country. That would bracket it with North Korea, Iraq, Libya, Sudan and Cuba. It will cut off all relations and persuade others to stop flights and trade. A fragile economy gasping for its breath will then collapse pushing the country firmly in the direction of mullahs and militants. India will have on its western border a volatile neighbour with violence becoming the ruling ideology. But the USA which has proclaimed itself as the enemy of terrorist groups all over the world should be more realistic even if its options are limited. The idea is to stretch what can be done to the limit. For instance, leading terrorist groups should be declared as such so that American residents cannot fund their activities. That would not unduly harm the interests of the Pakistan establishment, even it does, only marginally. It is true that India has to fight its own battle, but friends should clearly be seen on its side. A commendable thing is the reaction of the Centre. It has reacted soberly both to the praise and parsimony, with neither jubilation nor regret. The External Affairs Ministry is growing up. |
|
Justice to rape victims THE
Supreme Court's latest directive to the courts to treat the hearing of rape cases with greater sensitivity than they usually show has not come a day too late. The political leadership of the country should also be asked to read the small print carefully, for hidden in the directive to the courts is a message for them as well. Yesterday The Tribune reported the incident of a rape victim not being allowed to meet Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal. The victim and her mother wanted to meet the Chief Minister because of the indifference of the
police. The incident took place in Patiala. But the police was reluctant to register an FIR against the alleged rapist. The chairman of the Punjab Women's Commission had to intervene for the senior officers to take an interest in the case. Countless rapists escape being punished because of the combined failure of the investigating agencies and the judiciary in giving crimes against women the importance they deserve. A significant aspect of the case in which the apex court had to intervene to ensure justice to the six-year-old victim raises questions which can only be explained by the Himachal Pradesh High Court. The girl was raped in October, 1991. The trial court convicted the accused on the basis of available evidence. However, the Himachal Pradesh High Court upheld the plea of temporary insanity and set aside the lower court's verdict. The Supreme Court found more merit in the trial court's interpretation of the "facts" than in the high court's interpretation of the law. Strangely, this is not the only case in which the Himachal Pradesh High Court's order in a rape case was set aside by the apex court. A similar case had come up for review in August, 2000. The impugned order in that case too was delivered by the Himachal Pradesh High Court. The apex court advanced much the same argument, which it did in the latest case, for restoring the conviction of the maternal uncle of the victim. The three-Judge Bench headed by the Chief Justice of India put the issue beyond the realm of confusion and conflicting interpretation by stating that "courts should examine the broader probabilities of a case and not get swayed by minor contradictions or insignificant discrepancies in the statement of the victim". The verdict deserves wider publicity in view of the alarming increase in incidents of rape across the country. |
|
Space tourism IT
is a coveted picnic trip for a rich man, but a giant leap for mankind! With Dennis Tito becoming the first space tourist, the dark vastness up there does not look all that forbidding. In fact, it looks so enchanting and even accessible. The tab of $20 million will ensure that only people like Canadian-born film director James Cameron, maker of all-time boxoffice record hit Titanic, sign up for a trip right now, but the rates are bound to come down gradually. Some day, even men of ordinary means may be able to fulfil their fantasies the way Tito did. He has not gone into specifics, but says that he will be devoting himself to ensuring that others are able to make the trip that he just did, to become the first man to have this unique honour. Tremendous risks still remain. But these were there even when the man first thought of venturing across the seas. What lives on is the spirit of adventure. The creditable thing is that Tito made the trip at the age of 61. He was well past his prime, but went through eight months of gruelling, full-time training at Star City in Moscow. NASA was sceptical and raised objections all the way. But his indomitable spirit prevailed ultimately, no thanks to his capacity to pay much-needed greenbacks to the cash-starved Russians. Space was an obsession with him ever since the launch of Sputnik rockets and he single-mindedly worked to fulfil his ambition. He even became an aerospace engineer and developed the trajectory that sent the Mariner spacecraft to Mars and Venus. When that did not pave the way for his space odyssey, he quit the job and devoted himself to raising a $200- million empire that let him pay upwards of $20 million for his ticket. Shows that once you set your sight to a particular target, you can achieve the impossible. To that extent, the fairytale story has a moral worth emulating. The fantastic journey has an Indian angle to it. MirCorp, the company instrumental in sending Tito to space, has Chiranjeev Kathuria, a US-based telecom billionaire, as a key investor and a board member. Tito had shared his childhood dream with Kathuria at a party and the latter made it come true. The young Punjabi now says that his own dream is to send common people to space. One can only say "balle balle" to that! Forty years after Yuri Gagarin opened up space, it is all set to become the ultimate tourist destination. Next stop? Even sky is not the limit! |
|
From Bangla border to CBI chief ONCE in a while even the best-run countries get taken by surprise on the wrong foot. For instance, till today Americans are writing books to lament that, in December 1941, their country “slept” while the Japanese destroyed their almost entire Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbour. Fiftyseven years later they were berating the all-knowing CIA for its failure to detect the Shakti series of nuclear tests in the Rajasthan desert. What a remarkable coincidence it is that the Kargil Committee’s report (which, incidentally, Parliament has never found time to discuss) is titled “From Surprise to Reckoning”. Surprise, mixed with shock, was the Indian reaction also to the trauma in the high Himalayas way back in 1962. China, the source of this mortifying surprise to us, has also had its own share of surprises. The most startling and saddening of these came when Mao’s “Big Leap Forward” turned into a catastrophe of cosmic dimensions. Nearly 30 million Chinese died of starvation unwept and unsung. But there is a world of difference between the situation elsewhere and here. In most countries’ surprise is, as it should be by definition, a rare occurrence. Here it is a permanent state of affairs. Our surprises never cease, and they extend to all walks of life. A look back on some deeply depressing events in the last few weeks should suffice to drive home the point. The outrage on the India-Bangladesh border came to us rather like a bolt from the blue though anyone with eyes to see and ears to hear could have known what was cooking on the other side of the line. Thanks to ubiquitous corruption and worse on both sides of it, this “frontier” is violated flagrantly by smugglers and illegal immigrants almost every day. But let that pass. The real surprise of the gory event was that our understandable rage over the “defilement and desecration of Indian soldiers in uniform” had to be moderated when it was found that our own conduct had not been flawless. Moreover, at the very least, the other side also had a case. In the midst of confused and confusing exchanges, New Delhi has at last invited Dhaka to send a delegation. Pray, to do what? Well, of course, to find ways to implement the agreement Indira Gandhi and Mujibur Rahman had signed in 1974. Bangladesh had ratified it within months; India has yet to do so. Can a casual approach towards an important and friendly neighbour go farther than that? For, the Indira-Mujib accord was meant to solve the problem of 211 “enclaves in adverse possession”, that is to say small areas that belong to one country but — thanks to the eccentric Radcliffe Line, drawn in 1947 — are actually in possession of the other. One reason for the cavalier inaction is that transference of even the tiniest bit of territory requires constitutional amendment and consent of the relevant states. Since all the previous governments have failed to do the needful, where is the guarantee that the present one, a 24-party coalition, engaged in a bitter standoff with the principal opposition party, would grasp the nettle now? Let no one be surprised therefore if further surprises on the meandering border with Bangladesh hit us in the face in not too distant a future. In handling the tricky and potentially explosive situation on the ground, the Border Security Force (BSF) has given itself a certificate of poverty. The hiatus between the Union Home Ministry on the one hand and the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) and the Ministry of External Affairs on the other has made the situation much worse. Mr L.K. Advani’s total silence, indeed his refusal to read out the official statement in Parliament, only confirms that the greatest North-South divide is that between North Block and South Block on Raisina Hill. The BSF, like other paramilitary organisations and the bureaucratic machine in general, is doubtless run down because of politicisation and its own frailties and failings. But the country expects better from the Army and the other two defence services. Unfortunately, here, too, it faces disappointment and surprise. There can be absolutely no excuse for the horrendous fire at the ammunition depot near Pathankot, the source of supply to the troops guarding Jammu and Kashmir. After the even more disastrous blaze at a depot in Rajasthan, the then Defence Minister, Mr George Fernandes, had boasted that effective measures to prevent a recurrence of such a tragedy had been put in place. The inquiry committee’s report on the subject, of course, remains a tightly guarded secret. Under these circumstances it would be unwise to take at face value the Army’s claim that the fire near Pathankot was the result of “intense heat”. For, if so, why haven’t other ammunition depots, some in places much hotter, turned into infernos? In the “sab chalta hai” syndrome, the country will be fed lame excuses. The report of the inquiry committee that has been set up will be marked “Top secret”, in “national interest”, of course, and all concerned will be cleared of charges of negligence. The country will be assured that foolproof steps were being taken against nature’s propensity for arson and the file will be closed. Until the next ammunition dump explodes when fresh excuses would be easily thought of. The same mindset and casual approach is at work in Mumbai’s Dalal Street as at Pathankot’s Mamoon Cantonment. Ten years after Harshad Mehta’s depredations his soul-mates of today have repeated his performance. They have adopted exactly his methods plus some more, and while amassing several thousand crores of rupees for themselves have wiped out the life savings of millions of small investors. A Joint Parliamentary Committee has now been appointed. What it will or can do remains to be seen. But the inquires by SEBI so far have been meaningless because this supervisory authority is itself guilty of dereliction of duty. It failed to take action when it knew that inside trading and price manipulation were going on merrily. Was it only incompetence or were the watchdogs behaving as lapdogs of the crooks? The public is asking this question and it cannot be blamed for doing so. How low and lax have standards become is best illustrated by the sordid drama over the appointment, or rather non-appointment, of the Director of the CBI, the country’s premier investigation agency. Its credibility and prestige had suffered grievously in the past, and the powers that be seem bent on repeating that painful history. There can be no other explanation for their failure to set in motion in good time the procedure that the Supreme Court had prescribed three years ago to choose the agency’s director. The result is that the former Director, Mr R.K. Raghavan, has retired, handing over charge to an “officiating” incumbent. Evidently because faith in the impartiality and fairness of the appointing authorities had disappeared a number of police officers have been taking recourse to legal action to get their claims to the post-considered. An institution called CAT — Central Administration Tribunal — has magisterially ordered the government not to appoint a new director until it has heard and disposed of a petition on the subject. Of the unseemly lobbying that has gone on behind the scenes the less said the better. In this context the question is not who the next CBI chief will be but whether he, irrespective of who he is, would be able to command any prestige at all? To make the state of affairs even more lamentable the Union Minister of State for Home Affairs, Mr I.D. Swami, has let drop some truly extraordinary pearls of wisdom. Where is the harm, he asks rhetorically, if the CBI does not have a director for a month or two? According to him, the CBI, a competent and well-organised body, can function effectively even when it is “headless”. Someone ought to tell the honourable minister that the Union Council of Ministers is surely more competent and better knit than even the mightly CBI. So let it also function without a head for a couple of months. After all, the Prime Minister does need a brief vacation. |
|
Bureaucrat of a special breed CERTAIN
people have an uncanny knack of doing things. They are doers, and nothing else. They have the ability to turn even an adverse situation to their advantage. Mr N. K. Singh, till the other day Officer on Special Duty in the Prime Minister's Office, who has been shifted to the Planning Commission as Member, belongs to this category. He has been in the eye of a storm following the Tehelka expose and hence the transfer from the Prime Minister's Office. Mr Singh retired in January after putting in 37 years of service as a Bihar cadre IAS officer. Mr Vajpayee could have sent him to some inconsequential place as India's Ambassador, or just told him that his services were no longer required. But he did not do so, and this makes one believe that Mr Singh has not fallen from grace so far as the Prime Minister is concerned. The veteran bureaucrat's reaction to the development also shows no sign of dissatisfaction. Mr Vajpayee has obviously taken the decision willy-nilly, in deference to the wishes of the RSS bosses. PMO watchers do not rule out the possibility of Mr Singh influencing the decisions of the Prime Minister in economic matters where his specialisation lies. Moreover, Mr Singh may not hesitate to use his present position to create economic waves though there is very little role left for the Planning Commission in this era of privatisation. His friends in industrial circles or the business houses he is alleged to have favoured while functioning in the PMO are unlikely to leave him in the lurch. They may get a better assignment for him after the controversy surrounding him is forgotten. A postgraduate in economics from Delhi's St Stephen's College, Mr Singh comes from an illustrious family. His father was an ICS officer and mother represented Bihar's Purnea constituency in the Lok Sabha. His wife belongs to the Jodhpur royalty. When he argues a case he takes everybody along. But his qualities lose much of their shine because of a "darbari" streak in his behaviour. He also has the habit of taking all the credit for any work done by his colleagues. A very sharp person, perhaps. And that is why one should not be surprised if he continues to remain "useful" to his political bosses. A nephew revolts Murasoli Maran wears an anguished face and is defensive in his arguments. The impression this gives is totally deceptive; he has firm commitments and is not afraid of articulating them. Like when he blasted his uncle and Chief Minister Karunanidhi’s determination to make his son the future Tamil Nadu Chief Minister. He bluntly told whoever will listen to him that the DMK, his own party, is practising democratic process and is no royalty for someone to say my son is my successor. For good measure he added that it would be a dynastic rule and he would oppose it all the way. Anointing M.K.Stalin, the Chief Minister’s second son and the present Mayor of Chennai, has sparked a major inner party squabble. Stalin, born when the erstwhile Soviet Union was the ideological magnet for all social engineers, has calmed down after his abrasive, Sanjay Gandhi like ways. Still he is considered too brash and too non-DMK-like to become Chief Minister. A fond father and DMK supremo Karunanidhi gave the party ticket to nearly 70 aspirants who are known to be supporters of his second son. Azhagiri, the elder one, has also revolted. But his is a token one, confined to a handful of seats in Madurai and hence not threatening to the party. But the psychological damage is done and the DMK is perceived as a party riddled with family quarrels. Suddenly the DMK looks weak and faction-ridden. Obviously, Mr Maran has caused more damage. For long he was considered one of the ideologues of the party, second only to leaders like V.R. Nedunzheian, thanks to his long innings as editor of the party newspaper Murasoli, meaning sound of the war drum (nagara). Mr Maran has also been the eyes and ears of the DMK in New Delhi and his views have invariably shaped the party’s policy. More than elder son Azhagiri’s revolt, it is the disapproval of Murosali Maran that is bound to spark a heated debate within the party. At election time it is not a good omen. Up in the sky One Tito – Josip Broz — hosted the conference of the leaders of newly independent countries in Belgrade to launch the nonaligned movement. The Yugoslavian had adopted the name of Tito during the bitter guerrilla fight against the Nazis. Another Tito – Dennis – is the son of an Italian immigrant in New York and has officially launched the era of space tourism. Dennis Tito paid a cool $ 20 million (nearly Rs 95 crore) for going up and living in the cramped module of the International Space Station for a week and coming down. It works out to Rs 24 crore a day and to think that he ate canned food and perhaps drank no champaigne! Only an eccentric multimillionaire can throw that kind of money at something that has only curiosity or publicity value. Or somebody who is fascinated by space and made his millions in an unexpected way. That is Dennis Tito. Tito came close to wrecking the cooperation between Russia and NASA in building a future home in space. NASA was against sending him along with two others. He would be a distraction; he would not know how to act in an emergency; and at 60 not a prime candidate for the new venture. If NASA looked at the suitability of Tito as a paid astronaut, Russians, hungry for cash, looked at his cheque. And told him that he would be lifted on a Soyuz rocket. Tito’s mind-boggling cheque meets only part of the expenditure of sending building blocks to the space station. But a little help is always welcome and more Titos with an equally fat wallet are also welcome. Russia does not have many adventurous billionaires and so future space tourist enquiries should come from the dollar kingdom In reality, Tito is not the first amateur, paid astronaut or cosmonaut. Russia is known to have sold seats in its space vehicles to a rich Japanese and a French. The USA sent Glen Ford, a retiring Senator but a former astronaut, on a memory-reviving flight when he was 77. It also selected a school teacher to be the first non-professional astronaut but she perished in a space shuttle blast. India is eyeing the new market of space tourism. It thinks it can rake in many millions by sending cash-rich Americans to live in space for a few days and earn many millions. But the safety record is dismal and very rich people are worried like hell about their life. This is no reason to worry. Indians believe that swarga is above us and narak below us. A space station can be built to send rich Indians to their heavenly abode in a more modern rocket and publish their names in the obituary column of leading newspapers. |
|
In pursuit of
happiness EVERYONE is in pursuit of pleasure, constantly struggling to be more and more comfortable. Pleasure is believed to be a derivative of a high position, wealth, luxuries, a bigger house, a better decor, more gadgets, the latest car and so on. The individual is engaged in a constant struggle for achievement. An achievement gets linked to the struggle for more, for the next higher position. Still all this fails to satisfy the individual. He gets tense, sometimes fatigued and frustrated to the point of having a nervous break-down. Depression has been recognised as a widespread disease. Solutions to depression or a nervous break-down, hypertension are supposed to lie in: a) modern medicine, b) hard work, a non-sedantary lifestyle, c) eating habits, avoiding fast food, parties and late nights, and d) daily prayers, meditation and an unshakeable faith in God. Solutions in the first category become applicable after the ailment has appeared, while those in the latter category are meant for preventing the appearance of such conditions. The vital points to be considered are: — Whether there is more happiness in the package of material goods coupled with a higher tension level, though with better medical facilities. — Whether acceptance of whatever material status is available, coupled with satisfaction and mental peace, without frustration or tension is a better choice. — Whether our contemporary society with all the facilities is more peaceful and happy, than the society of the previous centuries. Certainly, the feeling of wellbeing is independent of worldly material status qualitative or quantitative. The scriptures have repeatedly referred to the physical world as ‘illusion’ or ‘maya’. Not that the physical world does not exist at all. On a hot day on a long metalled road, we see water at a distance. This phenomenon, known as the mirage or ‘Mrigatrishna’, has been explained by science. But an ignorant person is bound to be sure of having actually seen water and would chase it, without reaching it. Similarly, the phenomenon of mirage is linked to happiness and material goods. Man runs after these in search of happiness. He struggles and competes endlessly in the never-ending chase. Thus, man remains constantly immersed in struggle rather than in the feeling of bliss or happiness — ‘Ananda’. In this mirage of worldly desires, one never gets the ultimate desired object, because desire shifts from the achieved object to the next one not yet achieved. In our hurry to get more, we do not even stop to experience the comfort of what we have already gained. Earlier, man got the same pleasure in possessing a horse, a camel or a wheel cart, as he does these days in purchasing a car. The ascending order of the cost of vehicles cannot be correlated with the ascending order of the pleasure these give. If one chases pleasure through such worldly material goods, one is chasing a mirage, illusion, or ‘maya’. This does not mean that material goods, inventions and technical progress are to be shunned or discarded. But a true knowledge of what to aim at and what to chase is important. To chase happiness one has to dissociate oneself from momentary pleasures. The physical world has to be related only to its physical functions. The pursuit of happiness has to be free from the entanglement of illusion. Worldly things are to be kept at their rightful place. The development of a stable mind is the purpose of all religions. Some may get it through ‘Mantra Jaap’, others through other forms of prayer, fasting, meditation etc. A person has to select the best way suitable to him and contribute his effort to the progress of the world, and make it a better place to live in. |
|
Changing role of UK’s war-time bunker IT’S not the post office, the local bar, the church or the shop that villagers in Wawne, East Yorkshire, in the north of England, are fighting to save. It’s their local bunker. The people of Wawne are so attached to the breeze-block relic of World War II that they are applying to have it listed — and are battling with the local county authority, which wants to sell it off. The single-storey block was used by the military during the last war, but later became the area’s civilian emergency planning centre. There are still maps, charts, chairs and desks in its dark, disused chambers. But by the early 1990s, files and plans to cope with catastrophes could be compactly stored on computers, so the disaster HQ was transferred to a quiet suite of offices 10 miles away in County Hall. Since the end of the cold war, the same thing has happened to bunkers all over Britain. They have become all sorts of things, from mushroom farms to interference-proof housing for internet servers. Several have put their secret wartime pasts on display as museums of military and civil defence — which is what the residents of Wawne hope to do. “But in another cold war,’’ says Derek Brown, of the Wawne Action Group, ``we would want it used for its original purpose. Even though the bunker would only house officials, we need it to help the area recover from a nuclear attack.’’ The evolving roles of Britain’s bunkers mirror the changing ways that governments, central and regional, have planned for disaster over the decades — from nuclear attacks to floods, droughts, oil spills and diseases such as foot and mouth. But it has been no seamless progress, with some critics arguing that the shadow of wartime procedures still hangs over the way authorities deal with civil emergencies, and that we need to get rid of all vestiges of military thinking. The UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) reports confirm that nuclear war is no longer the preoccupation of military strategists. High on the nation’s hazard list now are global warming, scarcity of fresh water and biogenetic food scares. However, the 100 members of the group of nuclear-free local authorities believe Britain has yet to adapt fully to this new security environment. ``War planning still underwrites the whole emergency planning process,’’ says spokesman Stewart Kemp. ``A change in international relations and one circular from the Home Office could plunge us back into the 1980s.’’ At the height of the cold war, the government set about replicating key parts of its infrastructure in underground locations. Britain was divided into 10 regions, each the notional responsibility of a Cabinet Minister. The network was underpinned by 19 bunkers, known as regional government headquarters. In each, about 150 key officials would have the task of restoring ``civil governance’’, as official parlance put it, in their regions in the aftermath of an attack. Each bunker had a secure phone system linked directly to police and fire services and to London. Specially constructed cabinets were installed to protect IT and secure systems from the electro-magnetic pulses of a nuclear blast. All government ministries made arrangements to dovetail with this plan. Details of the extensive planning by all the big public service ministries were set out in once-secret war books. The British Ministry of Agriculture, for instance, set up enormous food stores, the last of which was emptied in 1993. Few of these structures survived the peace dividend and treasury pruning of the 1990s. But two did: the major underground command centres which would become operational in event of an attack. One (codename Pindar) is under the Ministry of Defence building in central London, and was completed in 1994 at a cost of $ 180 million — at a time when it had been decided to sell off the regional bunkers. The other (codename Burlington) is at Corsham, Wiltshire, in the west of England. Both have facilities for a sealed-off subterranean community of several thousand officials. In the early 1980s, contingency planning in case of a nuclear attack turned many local councils into temporary outposts for Nato exercises. Local officials rehearsed how everything from corpses and casualties to refugees and refuse would be handled in the event of a disaster. These annual operations, planned by Nato, still continue. Last year’s was known as Intex 2000, an international warning and detection exercise between 16 nations.
— By arrangement with The Guardian |
|
Indian nursery rhymes Laloo Bhai Bihari Went up the pahari To fetch a bail for court order Laloo fell down And lost his crown But Rabri reigned thereafter. *
* * Laxman Laxman Yes papa Eating money? No papa Telling lies? No papa Open your drawer Ha Ha Ha! *
* * Samata Party is falling down falling down falling down Samata Party is falling down falling down falling down my fair Jaitley (Jaya) *
* * Ba Ba Black Sheep Have you pulled the wool? Yes sir, yes sir, Three bags full. One for my father, One for my dame, And one for the CBI Crying in the lane. *
* * Little Miss Bharti, Did a Maha-arti, So the BJP would always hold sway. There came a big BSP With Mayavati its USP. And frightened Miss Bharti away. *
* * Little Lal Advani Sat with his TV vahini Taking his party’s rai He stuck out his thumb, hoping to pull out the plum, And said, ‘Can I have a slice of Vaj-pie?’ *
* * Batsman-bowler sat on the ball. Batsman-bowler had a great fall, All the bookies’ cookies, All the bribers’ men, Couldn’t put Indian cricket together again. *
* * Bankers and ministers Sold for a penny All the swindlers are so many The envy’s green And the CBI’s red Nail them all, and get their head, head, head. Veteran monster hunter Jan Sundberg landed himself in hot water with a white witch last week as he began an underwater attempt to catch the most famous and elusive resident of Scotland’s Loch Ness. The Swede has sparked fury among animal lovers and witches alike with plans for Operation “Clean Sweep”, a trawl of the lake which he hopes will net Nessie, the legendary Loch Ness monster. But Kevin Carlyon, high priest of the British White Witches, is determined to put a stop to the hunt by casting a protective spell over the loch and any monsters lurking peacefully beneath the waves. Sundberg, who is adamant the work of his Global Underwater Research Team is legitimate scientific research, is unimpressed by the interference and plans a distinctly unscientific solution. “It’s all a lot of mumbo jumbo, so we haven’t bothered with this guy,” he said. “If he shows his face down here again, we’ll throw him into the lake. I think he needs to be cooled off a bit.” The legend of a monster in the dark waters of Britain’s largest lake dates back to 565 AD when St. Columba, the holy man who brought Christianity to Scotland, spotted a fearsome lake-dwelling beastie.
Reuters |
|
|
SPIRITUAL NUGGETS If the blind findeth the Guru The blindness of the disciple is removed. Without the eye of wisdom bestowed by the Guru How can the snare of delusion be destroyed? — Guru Ravidas, Vani 15 ***** Q What is Nature? A The sum of all the forces which keep the world in movement. Q Why is the authority of Nature the highest? A She is the first and oldest parent of man. Q Why obey Nature? A Because we have learned through the experience of ages that we must. Q What if we do not? A She will replace us quickly by those who will. Q There is no alternative, then? A None whatever. Q What provision has Nature made to induce obedience to her laws? A She has joined together action and reaction, cause and consequence. Q Explain this. A To each thought, word and act, Nature has given the same power she has to the seed to grow and bear fruit after their kind. Q What other means does Nature employ to compel obedience? A She has lodged in us a representative of her authority, which we may call, Conscience. — A New Catechism by M.M. Mangasarian ***** Rejoice in all the moods of Nature, Experience the unseen divine glory manifested in various forms Spring is the season of flowers and scented breezes Which gladden the hearts, Summer follows and has a beauty of its own, The rain with its dark clouds and dazzling flashes, Bathes the entire earth with its splendour, Autumn and winter too possess their peculiar charm and beauty. — Sama Veda, 616 |
 |
| Punjab | Haryana | Jammu & Kashmir | Himachal Pradesh | Regional Briefs | Nation | Editorial | | Business | Sport | World | Mailbag | In Spotlight | Chandigarh Tribune | Ludhiana Tribune 50 years of Independence | Tercentenary Celebrations | | 121 Years of Trust | Calendar | Weather | Archive | Subscribe | Suggestion | E-mail | |
